That probably needs its own thread, JMJ. But I'd say replacement connectivity is certainly possible. Whether you can accomplish it will depend on the type of connection you have with your ISP, which is hardware, and the telecommunications regulations in your country, which is not.

And what if your stupid and annoying modem, which acts as a gateway/router, has its own inane firewall on it? And it doesn't offer any option to turn it off.

I would love to replace it with a *BSD box or just place *BSD on the modem/router -- but I can't see how to do that with the way my ISP handles stuff.

If you're talking about FiOS (which is the service I have), I think you can turn the the modem/router/firewall into a bridge without changing firmware or anything so that you can use your own hardware instead, but I'm not 100% sure on that

If you're talking about FiOS (which is the service I have), I think you can turn the the modem/router/firewall into a bridge without changing firmware or anything so that you can use your own hardware instead, but I'm not 100% sure on that

No, I don't use Verizion. I have AT&T and their 2701HG-B 2wire gateway.

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And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

In the US, you are not restricted to using what the Telcos lease to you. So you should be able to hook up any compatible ADSL modem replacement, if necessary, if you are unable to configure the ADSL modem/router into something more appropriate to your needs.

A couple years ago I had ADSL, the company went bankrupt and finally I settled on cable.. and I've never looked back.

Neither of my modems have had any sort of "Web configuration" functionality, so, I can't relate.. but it would be quite frustrating to have a "pseudo-firewall" forced upon you.

If you log into this router, can you find any setting labelled DMZ? that would allow you to pass all traffic to a system running *BSD+pf.

Sorry..

It does offer DMZ, but it will then only forward everything to a single host -- and I don't have a single host that physically has enough network connections to service the rest of the network. I have on my network 2 desktops, 1 laptop which uses both wired and wireless connection, and potentially a new networked printer (I'm waiting for better sale prices). None of those setups has more than one ethernet port.

Having poured over internet e-testimonials, looking at what (pitifully limited) documentation is provided from AT&T, playing around with the online modem configuration, I think that there is not an ideal solution to my setup. I can sidestep the modem's inanity to do what I need at a minimum to be done, but it's not all that pretty.

An ideal solution would most likely entail me buying some new equipment (like a nice sokeris computer) or extending one of my desktops (i.e., get a couple extra NIC cards). It's fun getting new stuff, but it's not fun having to pay for it (especially since I just gave all my money to the University).

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And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)